Helsinki: The Latest Architecture and News

Uusi Kansallinen (in English: the New National) is a two-stage, open ideas architecture competition for the design of an Annex to the National Museum of Finland in Helsinki. The competition has been jointly organized by the Finnish Heritage Agency, the National Museum of Finland and Senate Properties.

The new Annex will facilitate the production of large-scale and technically demanding exhibitions for the National Museum of Finland. In addition to exhibitions, its multi-use, easily adaptable spaces will be well suited for a diverse range of cultural, art and recreational events, conferences and other functions.

Finnish office Lahdelma & Mahlamäki architects have won the competition to design a new high-rise district in Helsinki. Proposing a cluster of public space and triangular plan towers, the firm will see the phased construction of the high-density, mixed-use towers and public space alongside construction firm YIT. Located in the Pasila district, the project is called Trigoni as a reference to the triangular plan of the towers and the desire to create strong connections around sustainable development.

OOPEAA, working in collaboration with Lundén Architecture Company, has won a design and build competition for a timber housing development in Kivistö, Vantaa in the Helsinki metropolitan area of Finland. Organized by the City of Vantaa, the competition asked entrants to design a district of wooden housing, part of a commitment “to provide climate-conscious development in housing.”

Titled “Upstairs – Downstairs, Living Together on Three Levels,” the OOPEAA and Lundén scheme will form part of the broader sustainable district, creating a link between natural forest, active streets, and railway infrastructure.

Helen’s Suvilahti solar power plant. Customers can lease panels and monitor their output in real time on the power plant’s webpage. Thus citizens can become solar power producers. In the background is the old Suvilahti power plant, today a cultural center. Photo attribution: Katri Tamminen / Helen

In the quest for carbon neutrality, the City of Helsinki in Finland announced its action plans to minimize greenhouse gas emissions substantially by 2035. The city’s fully owned energy company, Helen Ltd, a producer of district heating, power, and district cooling, aims to augment this policy by converting its largely coal and natural gas energy production processes to climate-neutral energy production, thereby eliminating carbon dioxide emissions fully by 2050.

OOPEAA (Office for Peripheral Architecture) has won an invited competition for the design of the Allas Sea Pool Family in Helsinki, Finland. Constructed on floating platforms, and designed as a modular, flexible, adjustable system, the Allas Sea Pool Family is intended to be a new global typology for coastal sites, where building on land is not feasible.

The invited competition asked entrants to submit proposals which responded to varying environmental and seasonal conditions, with OOPEAA ultimately chosen for their “strong concept that places the floating spa in a central location in the city.”

Finland based Futudesign has been announced as the winner of a competition which invited firms to repurpose part of the HelsinkiCentral Railway Station. The design, which will transform the station’s underutilized eastern wing into a hotel, both reinterprets and modernizes Eliel Saarinen's original architectural intent.

The renovation of the Aalto University Harald Herlin Learning Centre in Otaniemi, designed by NRT Architects in collaboration with JKMM Architects (interiors), has been selected as the winner of the 2017 Finlandia Prize for Architecture. Completed in 2016, the project is the first renovation to be awarded the prize. The original building was completed in 1970 to fit into the Alvar Aalto-designed Otaniemi campus plan.